Film Review

star0-5

Above all, Compliance is a sadistic exercise in deliberate, relentless unpleasantness, but to what purpose does writer-director Craig Zobel put the audience through their squirm-inducing paces? Presumably, the film, which details a prank phone call turned sexual assault at an Ohio fast-food restaurant, is meant to comment on the all-powerful nature of official authority (whether real or imagined) and to force the viewer to question his or her own potential response to the situation. But Zobel's unwillingness to push his inquiry beyond its most basic formulation, his compromising of the setup by playing his hand too early, and his misguided positioning of the viewer in relation to the material ensures that the only challenge the film provides is on the level of audience endurance.

The movie begins, after a few this-is-Middle-America establishing shots, with Chick-Wich manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) arriving at her fast-food establishment for the evening shift, only to be upbraided by a supplier for her improper handling of a recent incident in which an employee left open a refrigerator door and spoiled $15,000 worth of food. Her authority thus challenged, she enters the restaurant to prepare for a busy Friday night, but no sooner has she started work than the phone rings and a man claiming to be a police officer informs her that one of her employees, a pretty teenager named Becky (Dreama Walker), has been caught stealing from a customer and that he, the cop, has the whole thing on surveillance tape. He instructs Sandra to take Becky to the back of the store and search her; Sandra, already cowed by an authority figure earlier in the evening and, perhaps wanting to assert her own managerial clout, reluctantly agrees.

Over the course of the film's running time, the caller's demands escalate and, perhaps given the glib certainty with which he speaks (coupled with some few background details he drops about the people involved), or perhaps simply because of his presumed official status, Sandra performs every task he asks, often involving other employees—and even her boyfriend—in the demands of the voice on the other end of the receiver. By Compliance's conclusion, Becky has been stripped naked, humiliated, and sexually violated, and we're made to writhe through every sickening minute of it.

It seems as if Zobel wants to implicate the audience in these proceedings, but he doesn't have a very clear idea how to go about it. Yes, we're forced to watch in impotent horror at what goes on while Walker bares her breasts and humiliates herself for no great purpose, but we're also placed in a superior position to the characters, one in which it's easy to condemn their blind obedience to the caller on the phone. The characters are all presented as essentially decent people, but, despite a few scenes of casual banter at the film's beginning, there's no attempt to get us to identify with these people. So when we watch the scene unfold, rather than saying, "If I were in Sandra's position, I might have done the same," we're more likely to conclude, "These people are idiots, how can they not see through this prank caller?"—an attitude that only intensifies through Zobel's misguided decision to reveal to the audience early on that the caller isn't an actual cop (thus further distancing us from the characters' viewpoint) and the increasingly ludicrous nature of the caller's sick requests.

Which brings us to Zobel's trump card, the fact that, as an opening title informs us, the film is "inspired by true events"—and calls on a corresponding handheld faux-doc aesthetic. So no matter how implausibly the drama unfolds (and for all its relentlessness, its dramatic enacting is never very believably presented), the film can hide behind the fact that not only did this actually happen, but, as a closing title informs us, it occurred over 70 times at various locations throughout the United States. All of which is presumably meant to validate Zobel's bad-faith manipulations, ignoring the fact that whenever you present material in a non-documentary format, it becomes fiction and whether or not it really "happened" is irrelevant. All that matters is how it unfolds on screen and what purpose it serves.

In the case of Compliance, it serves very little, even as Zobel makes a few feeble efforts to complicate the material. His weakest attempt to add depth to the story is to offer up the simplistic irony of the caller being a good family man with a young daughter. Of slightly more interest are the varying degrees of culpability of the several characters who interact with Becky in the Chick-Wich backroom, from Sandra, who in the film's conclusion denies all responsibility for what happened, to Becky's young co-worker, Kevin (Philip Ettinger), who refuses to perform the sexual violations demanded by the caller, but who also does nothing to stop the situation.

Everyone's responsible in the end, including, presumably, the viewer (and maybe even Becky, who's initially presented as something of a slut, chatting with co-workers about juggling boyfriends and sexting). But if Zobel thinks he's implicated or challenged his audience simply by making us watch unpleasant acts that, given the fact that we can't actually enter the screen and stop what's going on, we're powerless to do anything about, than he's as clueless as his characters who quiver at the slightest hint of official influence. No one need tremble at Zobel's own directorial authority though. He's shown throughout Compliance that, in a movie full of misrepresentations, that conceit is the biggest sham of all.

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Everyone here, including the reviewer, seems to do no research and, therefore, to have no knowledge of the Mount Washington, KY McDonalds case upon which this is based. Everything happened almost exactly as portrayed in the film, that's what makes it so chilling. Y'all can just shut the F up cause you are a bunch of know-nothings.

Posted by David A. Anderson on 2015-07-26 23:21:45

I agree that this movie seems to have serious flaws, but there have been psychological experiments that have shown many people will do horrible things if someone they believe to be a legitimate authority figure tells them to. The experiments were unethical, to say the least, but their findings remain valid. As such, the scenario laid out in the movie is not as far-fetched as the reviewer wants to believe. The issues of whether the film is exploitative and whether anyone would really fall for such blatant violations of even cop-show police procedure are very much legitimate gripes, however.

Posted by vic5014 on 2013-01-09 17:55:09

"When faced with the prospect of power" should read "when threatened by the slightest hint of an authority figure," though the former is kinda implied as well at points in the movie.

Posted by Anonymous on 2012-08-28 16:32:00

Thank you for this review, which is probably the first that dared to call out this movie on its glaring flaws. While I wouldn't rate Compliance as low as half a star, I agree with most of the review. The point of this movie is supposed to be about how even normal people can turn into monsters when faced with the prospect of power. This could have worked if they didn't turn every single one of their characters into complete caricatures (check out the one speaking black character in the movie) that share no connection with, like, actual thinking human beings, and if they didn't decide to bash their message into your head instead of actually trying to work it into the story. I found no emotional development past the first half hour of the movie (which was hard enough to sit through).

Also, people, please stop bashing on a reviewer for breaking with the Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic consensus. This was a well-written review that thoughtfully laid out its case, so please at least try to debate its substance, rather than bitching about how everyone else loved it.

Posted by Anonymous on 2012-08-27 20:53:54

I haven't seen this movie yet, so it's not my place to judge it, or this review. But I have seen the trailer, and I'll say this: If I was a manager at a fast-food joint, and got a random phone call, claiming to be the police, and asking me to detain and then disrobe a teenaged employee, my response would be prompt and decisive; "Why aren't you already standing here with full credentials on display? I haven't got time for jokes. NEXT CUSTOMER, PLEASE!"

More likely, I would ask the caller to "please hold", then call 911 and ask them to send a patrol car to my immediate location. Then we'd see what's real and what's put on.

Maybe it's because I'm from NYC, and small-town folks are more intimidated by local law enforcement, but the entire premise, from the outset, seems absurdly unrealistic to me.

Maybe, when I see the film, I'll absorb some extenuating factor that makes this plot the least bit plausible.

Sorry.

Posted by Icepulse on 2012-08-21 08:57:35

I think Schenker is criticizing the filmmaker for implying that Becky is a "slut".

Posted by Anonymous on 2012-08-20 07:49:21

I share many of youur issues with the film, but the inference that the film might place some of the blame on Becky by noting that she has a sex life is flat-out bizarre. I can't tell if Schenker means to pass judgment on the character where the film does not, but that's how it reads, and it's irksome.

Posted by Anonymous on 2012-08-18 23:38:52

Critics have mostly sold out and their opinions aren't worth very much anyway. I don't mean they merely give empty praise for money- I mean they bow to the public-majority opinion. For fear of looking old or being mistaken for being narrow-minded. Either way, even as much as 2 decades ago- most critics came from magazines who didn't know shit and could practically be swayed to say something positive if they thought the stars were made up well and shot flatteringly. Turn back another decade and you'll find filmmakers themselves writing off critics for not understanding the demands of certain genres.

I realize what you're saying is that this film is good no matter what critics are saying. But, now you're talking about the critics so, it's relevant. The majority of critics don't know what they're talking about. I may not always agree with Slant (okay, even I admit that's an understatement) but, like I mentioned before with Nick Schager- they know what's bad. I trust them to at least know that. They haven't failed me yet in determining what's bad.

Posted by Anonymous on 2012-08-17 10:39:59

Expert use of sarcasm! I've seen this a lot on this site (and others have voiced this as well) where complaints are over-bearing/unjustified in the face of near universal acclaim (The Artist for example). But yes, pretty much every other critic loved it (there is ONE other negative review I found).

Posted by jay_dee_92 on 2012-08-16 09:10:50

Well, obviously, since EVERYONE else loves this movie—which I\'m sure is not even true, anyway—we MUST be acting all contrarian on purpose just to be different. Gimme a break!

Posted by on 2012-08-15 08:14:25

Do you guys just purposely go against the grain? Everyone else seems to love it, let alone giving it a .5. That's like "Bucky Larson" territory.